RIP Joy, our beautiful mum

 

Joy Rosen was born in Melbourne on 9^th May 1939, a year or so after her parents Les and Olga had eloped from their native Perth, due to parents who disapproved of their union. Once their marriage and beginnings of their new family were both a fait accompli, they took Joy back to Perth, which is where her younger sisters Shirley and Leonie were born. As an infant Leonie experienced terrible asthma so on doctor’s advice, Les and Olga relocated the family to the little Western Australian wheat belt town of Burracoppin, some 280km east of Perth, where the air would be drier and they thought may help her condition. And so it was there that the girls grew up. Running around in the bush and getting up to all kinds of mischief. Going down to Meriden to see the latest movie at the picture theatre. Spending days swimming at the old soak, a local water hole. Joy copped a scolding one day for tying Leonie up to a tree and leaving her there in the bush. Les was a wool buyer in the region, buying the bales from local sheep farmers and selling them down in the big smoke of Perth. Olga was the homemaker, a fabulous cook and skilled dressmaker who made all of the girls’ clothes with much aplomb; skills that she later passed down to Joy. Growing up in such rural surrounds, the girls were surrounded by many types of animals. One day Joy found a hen that was paralysed, completely covered in ticks. She sat down with the distressed chicken and painstakingly removed every single tick from its body. The bird regained full health and from that time onward would follow Joy around everywhere, even allowing her to dress it in clothes that Olga had made for it. But the most special animal of all to them was Prince. He was a lamb who had been given to Les by one of the local sheep farmers and who grew up as the family pet, being treated like and acting more like a dog. After several years of idyllic country living, with Leonie’s asthma having cleared up and with Joy in need of better schooling, Les and Olga decided that it was time to relocate the family back to Perth. So the five of them piled in to the family car. Les and Olga in the front, with Joy, Shirley and Leonie squashed into the back alongside the now fully grown sheep Prince, for the several hour drive back to the big city. They moved into a suburban house in Menora where Prince would occasionally get out of the yard and eat the neighbours’ gardens. In the end Les, who remained a wool buyer, travelling regularly between Burracoppin and Perth, decided that Prince would have a better life living out his dotage in wider pastures and so gave him to one of the farmers with whom he was friendly.

In Perth, Joy attended Perth Girls High school before going to secretarial school. She had blossomed into a beautiful young woman and had much attention from the local boys. She regularly attended local dances, adorned in beautiful dresses lovingly crafted by Olga. Les was particularly protective of his young daughter. One night when Joy was going out on a date to the movies with a boy, he made her take her young sister Leonie with them, just to ensure that there would be no shenanigans. As for going out with a non-Jewish boy that was a complete no-no. When Joy went on a few dates with non-Jewish guys, she had to either sneak out without Les knowing or wait until he was away up the country. As a twenty year old, Joy travelled to New Zealand to meet up with a boy who she was keen on, to stay with he and his family. On boarding the boat she was surprised to be greeted so ceremonially and to be invited each night to dine at the captain’s table, seated right next to the captain himself. She couldn’t believe the fuss that was being made over her. A couple of days into the journey she asked one of the crew why she was being treated like such a celebrity. It was then that she discovered that unbeknownst to her, one of her friends had written a letter to the captain masquerading as her mother, asking that her daughter be especially looked after and signing the letter off as Lady Rosen. Joy told the crewman that it wasn’t actually true. He told her that she shouldn’t tell the captain. That he was loving having nobility on board the ship and that if he found out the truth "it would break the old bugger’s heart".

After her New Zealand trip, Joy decided to fly the coop for good and she headed to the truly big smoke of Sydney, where she lived for a year. She’d become a bit of a stunner and was earning cash working as a model, her most celebrated campaign being for the Lollabout, a popular brand of sun lounger. She was in Melbourne to visit friends over one Yom Kippur when she met Herb Swedosh, a young expatriate American who had moved to Australia with his mother as a fourteen year old some years earlier. He was six years older than Joy but immediately took a shining to her, asking her to go and break the fast with him. She agreed and after the call of the shofar, they went off to Leo’s in Fitzroy Street to dine together. She had moved back home to Perth and was again living with Les and Olga at this stage. She didn’t meet up again with Herb until Christmas of 1960 when he was over there playing cricket for Victoria at the Jewish sports carnival. He took her out and they stayed out all night having a whale of a time. When he dropped her back home the next morning, Les was outside watering the garden. Not impressed that his daughter had been out all night who knows where, he looked at Herb and said to him, “one day you’ll have a daughter and you’ll understand how this feels”. Sage advice from Les because some twenty odd years down the track, Herb would indeed find out exactly how it felt as his own daughter Nat dished out the same treatment.

Joy and Herb were married in Perth on 28^th December 1961 and then moved over to Melbourne, taking up residence in a little flat in St.Kilda. In July 1963 they welcomed their son Greg into the world. He was the most beautiful baby, calm and quiet, who never caused them a care in the world. Actually that’s not quite true. He howled so much in those early days that the neighbours complained to the landlord and they were evicted from their flat, needing to find a new place to live. Herb’s work was going well and they relocated to Hobart for a couple of years, which is where they welcomed daughter Natalie into the world in 1965.

From Tassie the family lived to Perth for eighteen months, where mum loved being back in her old home town, before relocating for good back to Melbourne. From the late sixties through the mid-70s the family lived in Romsey Rise, East Doncaster. Joy and Herb had a particularly active social life and often had extravagant dinner parties where mum would cook up a storm for the guests, from multicourse banquets to fondu parties with delicious sauces. She was generally a pretty bubbly and friendly person, but during those Saturdays when she was cooking for guests, beware if you got in her way in the kitchen! Nat and I particularly liked it when they had guests over as we’d get to eat any leftovers the next morning. Always delicious. Being the seventies, mum also had a wardrobe of the times. Rocking her risqué hotpants, mini skirts, thigh high boots, and of course occasionally a poncho, with style. She always loved the glamourous side of life. The playlist of records when friends came over consisted of the soundtrack to Hair, Burt Bacharach and perhaps some Harry Belafonte. It’s probably the former of those records that started me on my way to my hippie sensibilities. At Romsey Rise she loved spending time in her garden, which had been built by her with huge assistance from her father Les on one of Nanna and Zayda’s trips over from Perth. Running round the backyard and often roaming the streets in those days, was our beloved family dog Rusty. We loved him. The neighbours and passers-by not so much. In those days of home bread delivery, Rusty would often come home with a loaf that he’d lifted from a neighbour’s front porch.

During this time mum began working as a secretary. She’d learnt to touch type at secretarial school years earlier and was extremely proficient in this skill. She started working with a family friend who was an architect, before moving on to work for Servier Laboratories in Hawthorn for a number of years. Mum and Dad both worked hard to get the money to send both Nat and I to private schools, in a bid to give us the best education that they possibly could. When I think back to our time of growing up, we never wanted for anything but had a relatively frugal existence. Mum still has to this day all of the things that we grew up with in our family home.

In the late-70s the family moved into much more luxurious surrounds in Toulon Drive, Lower Templestowe. Mum and Dad had bought the block of land years earlier and finally had the cash to build the house that they had designed along with an architect. The house was set up around entertaining and so the tradition continued. The kitchen was mum’s pride and joy. Full of all the mod cons. There were some big parties in that house and lot’s of barbecues out by the pool. It was a wonderful house in which to spend my teen years. After Nat and I had moved out, mum and dad continued to live there for a number of years before downsizing to a townhouse in East Doncaster in the late 90s. Over this time they had started playing lawn bowls together. Mum had always loved sporting pursuits, having played regular tennis and squash for a number of years.

In the year 2000, the first of Joy’s beloved grandchildren was born in the UK, where Greg and Tori  (who had married in 1994) were at that time living. Finn followed eighteen months later and in 2002, Joy came over to the UK for Jazzy’s second birthday. While there, I took her on a long weekend trip to Paris. Just the two of us for a three day trip. We had a fantastic time together taking in all the sights, dining at Maxims, watching the Can Can performed at the Paradis Latin and she even came with me to an Irish pub at 6am one morning to watch England play Brazil in the soccer World Cup. She was pretty much up for anything. When we couldn’t get a cab one night, she took off her high heels and we walked the five or six kilometres back to our hotel through the streets of Paris with mum in her stockinged feet. She’d always had a strong love of Paris and all things French, so I think she loved the romance of this action.

In late 2003, Herb died suddenly and mum moved solo into an apartment in the Classic Residences in East Brighton. She loved it there and a whole new next chapter of her life unfolded with her new found independence. In 2005 she hooked up with Mervin, an ex-pat South African guy who had really taken a fancy to her. He sold his apartment in Toorak and bought an apartment also at Classic Residences, just down the hall from mum. She’d had enough of sharing her space completely with a man, and this arrangement worked really well for them both. They would go out for dinner and to the cinema, and each had their own space for themselves and their grandchildren when they’d come to stay. Joy and Mervin would go away on trips together, loving particularly to go on cruises.

In 2011, Joy’s third grandchild Kimi was born, in Broome, Western Australia, while Tori, Greg, Jazzy and Finn were on a year long trip around Australia. She flew up to Broome to see her new grandson. She was over the moon. She loved nothing more than being with her three grandchildren. She was so proud of each of them.

Mum was diagnosed with polycythaemia back in the 90s. She always knew that it’s progression was to myelofibrosis and then eventually to acute myeloid leukaemia. In 1995 a doctor told her that she had eight years to live. Well, you showed him mum. Rather than treating this knowledge as a hindrance, she took the opportunity to make the most of life. She set an example for us kids with her bravery and always felt that once she’d passed those eight years, some 17 years back, that everything else was a bonus. When she had her diagnosis of AML only a month or so ago, she came to stay with us, which is where she stayed until she passed, only yesterday. When I broke down crying with her a couple of weeks ago, she took me in her arms and comforted me, as she had done for all those years as her child. She told me that she wasn’t afraid to die. She’d just miss seeing her beloved grandchildren growing up. She was brave right to the end. I love you mum.

Joy Swedosh (Rosen)

9 May 1939 to 13 October 2020